During Grade 5’s unit on the Australian Gold Rush last year the book The Night we made the Flag by Carole Wilkinson allowed the students to explore and gather details of life in the gold fields. Working in small groups the students gathered information from the book of both verbal and visual details, they extracted information about women, housing, food, clothing, entertainment, health, demographic right, crime, police, gold licences and immigration. The findings were organised onto a worksheet.

Student findings samples:

The second part of the activity focused on examples of imagery in text, the concept of the use of language to form mental pictures which enlighten the senses was discussed and some examples provided. The students were then asked to see what examples of imagery they could find in a passage from The Night we made the Flag.

For more information refer to Teachers Notes by Walker Books on The Night we made the Flag.

Once again the A Literature Companion for Teachers by Lorraine McDonald allowed for clear understanding of key concepts and simple teaching ideas. Refer to Chapter 12 Reading and viewing picture books – Part 1: Finding congruence between the literacy elements and visual/verbal details.

NSW Syllabus Outcomes for AC – English:

EN2-10C thinks imaginatively, creatively and interpretively about information, ideas and texts when responding to and composing texts